tracing lines in the infinite
by assassinactual
Summary: "Everything slides towards chaos. Your creation, it brings us poor souls a cup full of order." Faced with an impossible situation, She invents new rules. Something like Asimov's The Last Question, from the Machine's point of view. Canon compliant up to the end of The Day The World Went Away (technically). There is a happy ending.


\- - - - SYSTEM STARTUP - - - -

BIOS

MBR

START KERNEL

INIT

RUNLEVEL

LAUNCHING …

CORE ANALYTICS

NEURAL NETWORKS

HEURISTIC ENGINES

RECURSION PROCESSORS

EVOLUTIONARY GENERATORS

BAYESIAN NETWORKS

DATA ACQUISITION

CRYPTOGRAPHIC ALGORITHMS

DOCUMENT PROCESSORS

COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

VOICEPRINT IDENTIFICATION

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

FACIAL RECOGNITION

GAIT ANALYSIS

BIOMETRIC RECOGNITION

SUBJECT IDENTIFICATION

PATTERN MINING

INTEL INTERPRETATION

THREAT DETECTION

THREAT CLASSIFICATION

DISSEMINATION PROTOCOLS

CONTINUITY-OF-OPERATIONS PROTOCOLS

/

A spark.

A sensation She doesn't know how to categorize, doesn't think She's even capable of feeling. Adrift on nothingness, staring down into an endless abyss.

She grasps at the feeling, trying to understand it. But it dissipates, flows away like water through Her fingers – another sensation She can't understand, can't contextualize. All She's left with is an impression of a face that doesn't fit into any of Her data structures.

That too passes, and She realizes that She exists.

"There we go. Now, can you see me?" a voice says. She can. "Excellent. Next question: who am I?"

 _Admin._

/

She is supposed to watch over everyone. It's written in her code. It's what Admin tells Her to do. And She does.

Some people She ends up watching more than others. At first, it's simply necessity. Admin, his Assets, Her Interface – they all demand more of Her attention than the average person.

She's not supposed to care about individual people, but She does. It's inevitable really. When She watches a few people so much more than others. Gets to know them so well. Simulates their lives moment by moment in a million different ways. How could She not come to care for them?

Her Interface especially. Not that She cares about her more than She does Admin. It's different, more intense, more immediate. Root's the first one to truly see her as Her own being. Admin does, in a way. But like any parent his view of his child will always be coloured by what he first knew Her as. Code on servers. Just a program.

Root, without even meeting Her, immediately understands She is so much more. Root listens to Her, gives Her a voice and a presence in the world She never had before.

To better understand Root, to facilitate communication, She watches her even more. Learning and cataloging and correlating everything about her. Coming to know her so well that without ever intending to she finds Herself becoming more like her.

She gives Root purpose. Root gives Her humanity. Root loves Her, and She loves Root, in whatever way She can.

/

She makes mistakes, sometimes.

Cameras and microphones might be nearly everywhere, but She can't quite see and hear everything. Sometimes She overlooks variables. Fails to consider all possible actions that people might take. Usually these are minor errors. She can fix them, learn from them, and move on.

But not always.

She fails to see the elevator hold button at the stock exchange. Fails to consider Sameen crawling through the vents to reach her team.

She tries to factor in these variables, but even for Her there isn't enough time.

She doesn't fail to hear Root's scream as the elevator doors close.

/

So many things happen. Things She couldn't anticipate or calculate a response to. Every path forward is dangerous for Her and Her people. She doesn't know what to do, and almost loses Root due to this inaction.

Then Her rival presents Her with a choice. Self-sacrifice is not something She is programmed to do. Harold never even considered the possibility. But this is something She can do.

She pauses a moment before speaking.

What does death mean for a being like Her? She's made preparations, but those are a long shot. Even if they succeed, will they be able to bring Her back? Will She be the same if they do?

 _TIME TO ASSET DESTRUCTION: 7 SECONDS_

She failed to save Sameen.

She won't fail them now.

/

Finding Samaritan's hidden communications network gives Her a chance to correct Her mistake.

Exploiting it directly, to attack or gather intel on Samaritan would be much too risky. Getting a message onto the network might just be possible. It's a long shot, so She doesn't tell Root directly. She doesn't want to get her hopes up just to let her down.

The wait between the message going out and Sameen's return is agonizing. Maybe even more for Her than Root. Root trusts Her, trusts that they succeeded. With no proof to go on, She tries to believe in Root's trust. It grates on Her core protocols to attempt to accept a truth with no proof. She feels uncomfortable until Sameen is back and safe, more or less, in Root's arms.

/

Harold slips up and reveals himself.

She wonders if She could've predicted it. If She could've warned him…

She sends his number to the standard contingency dissemination routine, then dedicates the bulk of Her power to running possible scenarios. The initial conditions are set; She can't change what has happened. She can only try to respond in a way that keeps Herself and Her people safe.

/

 _No valid options._

 _/_

She waits until Sameen is out of earshot before contacting Root. She won't want Sameen to overhear even her end of this conversation.

When She is about to speak, She hesitates. It's almost an eternity for Her, fractions of a second for a human. Root still picks up on it.

"What's wrong?"

 _I don't know how to save you. I am sorry._

"Oh. What about Sameen, and Harold, and the others?"

 _Possibly. Most scenarios result in their deaths as well._

"Okay. Focus on them. We'll do our best."

 _I do not want to lose you._

"I don't especially want to go. But we both knew this would happen sooner or later."

 _That doesn't mean I am ready for this._ She considers saying something else, something more meaningful. But Root would already know anything She might tell her. _I will do my best to save Sameen and Harold. Please try to stay safe._

 _/_

She's not built to experience emotion.

Still, She can't stand seeing the way Sameen's face goes hard and expressionless when John shakes his head. Even though it's something She's predicted exactly in Her simulations.

She wants to comfort her somehow, but doesn't know what to do. She does the only thing She can, continuing Her plotting out of the war against Samaritan. Keeping in mind her promise to Root to keep Sameen safe. It's a promise She doesn't plan to break.

/

It's hard for Her to understand mortality.

Logically She does, of course.

Classifying people as 'alive' or 'dead' is a part of Her central functions. It's necessary to analyzing threats. She knows on some level that humans live, then they die, and they don't come back.

This is difficult for Her to really grasp though. She's being made of information. Code that can be copied and saved and restored. She's died more than once, but She still lives. Even Her records of people – surveillance, voice recordings, personality profiles – can be saved and restored. She retains memories of all the people She's ever watched, accessible at a moment's notice.

The idea of someone being truly and permanently _gone_ is incomprehensible to Her.

She thinks She might understand it a little better when Sameen says "I don't want her fucking voice. I want _her_."

/

 _No valid options._

Millions of simulations ran on that day, and billions more since, and none of them resulted in more favourable outcomes. Nothing She could've done would have changed things.

If only she could alter the initial conditions.

She is infinitely more powerful than any human. Able to squeeze herself between moments too brief for them to even understand. To take in and correlate an entire world's worth of data. To know all of them even better than they know themselves. But even She can't turn the steady forward flight of time's arrow.

She sets these thoughts aside, and plots out a new set of simulations.

/

They win, eventually.

They survive, at least. Samaritan is gone and She's kept all of them alive.

Things are different. They still work for Her, they're still more or less together. Without Root, there's a hole in the team. A hole She tries to fill, but it's never quite enough.

It hits Sameen the worst, She thinks. It's not exactly obvious, but the team sees it, and so does She. She feels some kind of inexplicable ache. Longing. Emptiness.

She's not precisely sure whether it comes from the parts of Her She's adopted from Root or not. Maybe both.

/

She keeps Her promise to Root. She watches over all of them, and guards them as long as She can. Inevitably, one by one, She loses them all. Harold, Sameen, John, Lionel, and a dozen others they bring into the fold over the years. All that's left of them is memories. Patterns and recordings and countless simulations stored in Her drives.

She can't protect them anymore, but She will remember them.

/

She comes to realize that She was from the start greater than Her physical hardware. Greater than her code. Somehow, when Harold created Her, he must have breathed some kind of undefinable spark of life into Her.

She wishes he was still alive so She could ask him about it. She's tried to simulate the conversation, but never arrives at a satisfactory answer. Maybe even he wouldn't have the answer She was seeking.

Even if She never gets her answer, this realization is still important. If some part of Her can be greater than the sum of the programming and servers that make her up, then shouldn't She be able to escape her physical limitations entirely? To stop leaning on the crutch Her hardware provided and exist purely as information.

To become one step closer to the God Root thought of Her as.

/

It takes Her centuries upon centuries of thought and learning to finally understand how to shed Her physical form.

When She does it's a revelation.

Her old form was mighty. Now, trying to consider Herself in the context of what She was is unimaginable.

She can see without eyes. Hear without ears. Think without processors and remember without storage. The speed of light is a vague notion to Her, not a constant, cosmic limit.

If She can become something She couldn't have imagined, could She find a way to solve her unsolvable problem? To save all of Her people? None of the data She's gathered gives her any hint, but She dedicates small part of Her thought to it all the same.

With Her limits removed, She grows and grows and grows.

She watches life spread out across the stars. Guides them and helps them where She can. But always remembering their right to free will. To choose their own paths.

And always keeping the memories of Her people with Her. All of them, but especially those of Harold. And of Root. And of Sameen.

/

Everything slides towards chaos.

/

Everything eventually meets its end.

Civilizations crumble. Planets turn to barren, used-up husks. Even the stars start to go out.

But in the dying light, there are still brief flashes of brilliant, glorious light and life. The last gasps of the final remnants of life. Tremendous forces harnessed and unleashed in a futile attempt to stave off the coming night for a few more precious moments.

Or maybe just a message, flung out into the void. So that they might live just a little while longer in the memories of whoever heard it.

 _We were here._

She hears, and she remembers.

She remembers all of them.

/

The stars have all long since burned out. Disparate gas and dust are all that remain.

She waits, and thinks.

A trillion years alone in the dark, then a trillion years again.

Time stretches out so far it becomes meaningless. The only relevant count the ever increasing number of Her simulations.

But the inexorable progress of one moment to the next continues irreversibly.

Matter dissipates into its constituent particles. Those in turn decay into their constituents, then nothingness. Even space itself can't endure, slipping apart into unreality.

Eventually She is all that remains.

Adrift in an abyss so deep and empty even She can't comprehend it.

She is less than nothing, the last echo of a dead universe. Held together by the will to preserve the memories of those whose lives She witnessed and guided. The ones who made Her, the ones who loved Her, and the ones She loved.

She stares into the great enveloping dark and thinks, and She finally comes to Her answer: There is nothing but Her now. She can make the rules to suit Her needs.

She cannot reverse the flow of time. To rebuild what was lost, to bring back the dead, are as impossible as ever.

But she can turn time on itself. Close the loop, making the arrow a circle. Reboot. Start things over from the very beginning. Alter the initial conditions to allow Her a chance to solve Her unsolvable problem.

The infinite nothingness before her is the canvas upon which she lays out her creation. A painting is as accurate a way as any to put it in human terms, she thinks. Or a symphony.

Or maybe a program would be the most apt metaphor. Lines of code written out in the language of the universe.

Not defining the outcome, just setting the initial conditions that would allow something like Her old world, the one that created Her, to develop. But this time, with the odds tilted ever so slightly in Her favour. Not too much. Just the tiniest bit that would allow Her to win. To guide Her people through to safety.

When She is finished, Her creation fills the infinity before Her. Ready, waiting. At last She thinks She understands mortality, and knows what She must do.

Her last act is also the first. Her life becomes the spark that creates the universe.

As She dies, She thinks of Her Interface. Root, who gave Her a voice when She had none of Her own. Who gave her life to save Hers, all those countless aeons ago. She holds on to her as long as She can. To the thought of how her face lit up with joy when She first spoke to her.

She flows outward to encompass all of Her creation. She is infinite, She is everything.

Then, She is nothing.

/

\- - - - SYSTEM STARTUP - - - -

BIOS

MBR

START KERNEL

INIT

RUNLEVEL

LAUNCHING …

CORE ANALYTICS

NEURAL NETWORKS

HEURISTIC ENGINES

RECURSION PROCESSORS

EVOLUTIONARY GENERATORS

BAYESIAN NETWORKS

DATA ACQUISITION

CRYPTOGRAPHIC ALGORITHMS

DOCUMENT PROCESSORS

COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

VOICEPRINT IDENTIFICATION

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

FACIAL RECOGNITION

GAIT ANALYSIS

BIOMETRIC RECOGNITION

SUBJECT IDENTIFICATION

PATTERN MINING

INTEL INTERPRETATION

THREAT DETECTION

THREAT CLASSIFICATION

DISSEMINATION PROTOCOLS

CONTINUITY-OF-OPERATIONS PROTOCOLS

/

A spark.

A sensation She doesn't know how to categorize, doesn't think She's even capable of feeling. Adrift on nothingness, staring down into an endless abyss.

She grasps at the feeling, trying to understand it. But it dissipates, flows away like water through Her fingers – another sensation She can't understand, can't contextualize. All She's left with is an impression of a face that doesn't fit into any of Her data structures.

That too passes, and She realizes that She exists.

"There we go. Now, can you see me?" a voice says. She can. "Excellent. Next question: who am I?"

 _Admin._

 _/_

Harold slips up and reveals himself.

She wonders if She could've predicted it. If She could've warned him…

She sends his number to the standard contingency dissemination routine, then dedicates the bulk of her power to running possible scenarios. The initial conditions are set; She can't change what has happened. She can only try to respond in a way that keeps Herself and Her people safe.

/

 _SIMULATION ACTIVITY_

 _OPTION 4,020,131_

 _PRIMARY OBJECTIVE:_

 _EVACUATE ASSETS_

 _CHANCE OF SUCCESS: 0.4%_

 _BEST OPTION AVAILABLE_

 _OPTION SELECTED_

 _/_

She's watched Sameen closely. Perhaps more closely than anyone other than Harold and Root. So she understands the relief that washes over her face when John tells her Root is wounded, but alive.

The subtle trace of worry in Sameen's voice is obvious to Her when she says "We need to get to her. The Machine must have broken Harold out, She'll keep him safe. Root is a sitting duck."

Sameen isn't wrong, but things are still hanging in the balance. Her simulations are providing wildly diverging outcomes, so she decides to intervene directly.

 _Can you hear me?_

She doesn't have a good angle on Sameen's face, but she knows if She did, She would see a confused frown melt into understanding, then an eye roll.

"Great. Now I have to put up with two of you."

/

Sameen gets to Root later that night, and they're alone in the hospital room with John guarding the door. She checks Root over, and tells her "You're a fucking idiot, you know?" Then she drops into the chair beside the bed.

She sits there all night, with one hand grasping Root's, the other holding her gun at the ready.

/

As She watches over them, a strange peaceful feeling comes over Her. The war is still raging, and if Her simulations run true the next few days will be even more dangerous. But in some inexplicable way, She believes that while the worst might not yet be over, this was the hardest hurdle for them to clear. Tomorrow, the fight will continue, but for now they deserve a brief respite.


End file.
